Today, voicemail for mobile phones is simply that, storing voice messages when the receiving party is not available, to be retrieved at a later time. Essentially, voice mail for mobile phones operates in a very similar manner to voicemail for conventional office phones. To date, there has been no attempt to integrate images or video with voicemail for mobile phones or conventional office phones.
Communications between two parties where both voice and video are utilized is well known and is commonly referred to as video conferencing or teleconferencing. Sometimes this capability is also known as a “Net Meeting”. Here, a group of individuals, each having a computing device including microphone, speaker, video camera, and a connection to the World Wide Web, are able to communicate in a real-time manner through both video and voice mediums. The ultimate goal of a video conferencing system is to transmit a continuous stream of audio and video to and from each participant in the meeting or conversation, and to emulate as much as possible the interaction that would occur if all participants were in the same room. To do this, there will be compromises and limitations for many years to come relative to the desired functionality for video conferencing due to bandwidth limitations. In contrast to this goal and these compromises, the invention described herein uses existing bandwidth capabilities to selectively integrate images and video with voice communication in order to solve very specific and valuable problems. The manner in which this integration occurs has not been offered before.
The term “videomail” is often used in the industry, but in contrast to voice mail, does not refer to the storage of messages for later retrieval. Instead, it refers to attaching video clips to e-mails and a similar manner to the common practice of attaching files containing digital photographs to e-mails.
Cameras have, at times, been incorporated into mobile phones for surveillance purposes. Instead of broadcasting digital video via a data link with the mobile/cellular service provider, these phones broadcast an RF signal to a viewing receiver in the same manner as any other covert surveillance camera system.
Digital cameras are available as attachments to some PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), some of which also are available with wireless connection to a service provider allowing accessibility to the World Wide Web. Some PDAs with wireless Web-interface capability can also function as mobile or cellular phones. Some mobile phones have added PDA capabilities, again with wireless Web-interface capability. Also, some mobile phones now have digital cameras available as options to allow pictures to be captured and attached to emails. However, none such devices offer the integration of still images or video with cellular voice communication or with voicemail for cellular phones following the existing paradigm of phone calls and voicemail messages.
A very successful capability offered by one cellular service provider (the Nextel Direct Connect® digital two-way radio service), allows frequent communications among a group of individuals who work closely together to be more convenient and less costly. As a result, this capability has been adopted by the majority of businesses that require frequent communications with individuals working at different locations in a local area, for the most part, businesses in the construction industry. This allows a manager, foreman, or responsible person to more easily keep track of the progress at a variety of locations, and more readily communicate to affect swift problem resolution. Unfortunately, these communications rely on the ability of the individuals involved to clearly describe situations and problems they observe in terms that the responsible person can understand in order to best make decisions and guide the remote workers. The ability for the responsible person to see the subject or problem area would significantly enhance the value of these communications.
A solution is needed that, given the bandwidth limitations of current and next generation cellular data transmission capability, provides an easy way for persons to communicate image and video information, while maintaining a communication paradigm that is familiar, basically the paradigm of phone calls and voicemails. Such a system would allow high resolution images to be transmitted when a high level of detailed is required, and alternately, video clips (which may be at lower resolutions) where spatial relationships and or motion information is required.